Ben Affleck, Kerry Washington, and Steven Yeun lead the star-studded cast of Netflix’s Animals, premiering October 9. The movie follows a Los Angeles mayoral candidate and his wife as they become entangled in a web of deception after their son is kidnapped. Its connection to Mexico goes beyond cast members Luis Gerardo Méndez and Adriana Paz. For Affleck, it’s personal.
“I lived in Mexico for a year when I was 13, and I went back a bunch of times,” Affleck shared with Remezcla. “I love Mexico.”
He explained what the country means to him: “It was a meaningful time in my life, and it made a big difference to me, and I just feel tremendous fondness and love and affection for the country. I learned a little bit of Spanish there, and now I kind of feel like…maybe I’d like to be kind of… I asked Luis if he could make me honorary Mexican. He said, ‘No, I can’t do that.’ But I at least want to, you know, go visit, have a good time.”
Affleck also praised Méndez and Paz for their contributions beyond acting. “Frankly, I’m enormously proud of this movie and Luis and Adriana’s contribution that is not just as actors. They are writers and really co-filmmakers with me. They wrote their scenes. They created this. This is not a movie that is, or should feel limited to, oh, English language or, you know, United States sort of typical movie.”
“I want Latin American audiences to understand that this is a movie also with their audience in mind and seeking to understand that, to make a story with which they can identify and appreciate and that is open to that audience and wants to invite them in.”
That connection helped make the cast’s October 4 promotional fan event in Mexico a priority. “Mexico City obviously is the center, the hub for Latin American media. I mean, I know every Latin American country will argue about how we’re the most important and these people don’t speak Spanish right and all that. I’ll stay out of that, but I will say that it’s a pleasure and an honor to go there.”
With Affleck directing, Washington and Yeun also helped shape their characters. “We had a lot of input about… we felt like our characters needed a moment. When you see the film, you realize a lot of the film is about being able to witness conversations that normally you may not be privy to, right?” Washington told us.
She elaborated: “What do we, how do we speak to each other when certain people are out of the room? How do other people speak to each other when we’re not in the room? How do we speak about people who aren’t in the room? We realized our characters’ relationship was rich in ways we couldn’t explore in the script because we were never alone together. And so, Ben invited us to think about what that conversation would be, what would it look like, and how it would also give Sam’s character more room to breathe and express himself in his very unique, important point of view.”
“It felt like even that scene was kind of a lot of unspoken stuff, but also like you’re exposing aspects of your performance to each other that you both know you’re doing because you’re in a specific situation,” Yeun added.
There’s something for everyone in Animals, with everyone involved working to make the film as authentic as possible.